Wow! Excellent posts, girls! It took 9 pages for us to get here, but I'm really glad we stuck it out!!

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If we want to 'attract and retain women,' we are going to have to acknowledge that different women want different things and start by deciding whom we want to attract. However, if the dojo-cho refuses to admit that some aspects of training are different for men and women, I'm willing to bet fifty rolls that they won't get many women at all.

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I think that it can be more difficult for women to find their way in the martial arts dojo, as the process is inherently better understood by men.

Great points!!!

Dojo culture formed in a world entirely foreign to western female upbringing. A lot of what goes on and is required of us (what we must accomplish) is in direct opposition to behavior expected of me pre-training - for example, by my parents or in school. I think we begin training with our experiences of being told to always defer to elders and not bother anyone with our problems, etc... When we see the way things work in a dojo we may naturally assume the respect required of us is the repressive kind that we have worked so hard to buck. There are likely many more women who could be excellent students, but quit over this misunderstanding. Only few of us are willing or able to overcome this obstacle.

I think in general, different things make us feel respected than what makes men feel respected. Since dojo life was set up by and for men, it makes sense that it encourages them in their "native language". Perhaps the men feel we are "fragile" and "weak" when women complain only about feeling left out, because they understand that to mean we are complaining about feeling disrespected from hard training. We in turn get insulted at the idea that we can't handle hard training... And so it goes...

Sorry my points are not articulated very well this morning. Some people have a way with words, and others, well, not... have... way...